IRAN WAR SUCKS COLOUR OUT OF JAPAN'S SNACKS

"We fade to grey" — even the humble potato chip isn’t immune to geopolitics. Pass the black-and-white bag (at least until the colours come back).

A dark shadow has fallen across shelves in the Mega City. Japan’s biggest snack maker, Calbee, has announced it will temporarily switch some of its best-known products from colour to plain black-and-white packaging because supplies of ink ingredients have been hammered by the ongoing Iran war. 

The company says that 14 lines  will get the new-look — including various crisps and prawn crackers — with the sober-looking snacks appearing from 25th May. The colourful branding that generations of Tokyoites have grown up with will then become a thing of the past — at least until normality is restored (a high bar in the modern world). 

This is yet another reminder of how the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has rippled through Japanese life. Oil and gas prices have spiked since the waterway was effectively shut in retaliation for US and Israeli strikes, and with them the supply of naphtha — a key petroleum by-product used in printing inks and plastics. Naphtha prices in Asia have almost doubled. Before the conflict, around 40% of Japan’s naphtha came from the Middle East. 

Calbee put it "plainly" in its statement: the switch is a response to "supply instability affecting raw materials amid ongoing tensions in the Middle East."

The aim, they say, is simply to maintain a stable supply of products. Taste and quality remain unchanged, though the launch of a new sour cream flavour has been pushed back to July. 

It’s the kind of quiet adaptation that characterises life in the world’s largest metropolis right now. While the Nikkei can swing wildly on rumours of peace in the Gulf, ordinary consumers notice the change one crisp packet at a time. The government says it is broadening naphtha sources (more from the US, for example) and working to ease bottlenecks, but for now Tokyo’s konbini shelves are turning monochrome.